Citizen Records News

Box Set: 2LP (sparkle) + 7" (transparent) + CD + Vinyl Slipmat + Booklet + 6 Coasters + Keychain + Stickers

Originally released in 2005, OK Cowboy, Vitalic’s first album, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a reissue in several formats (box set, double vinyl, CD, digital), enriched with rare tracks and previously unreleased versions.

OK Cowboy is a landmark album in electronic music, a pivotal record between eras.


It perfectly captures that period while also anticipating the raw, abrasive new sounds of French Touch 2.0 (the movement led by Justice and the artists of the Ed Banger label). Twenty years later, the impact and power of this major album still mark it as a defining release of the mid-2000s, retaining its full sonic relevance today.



Box set contents: double LP, 7-inch single, CD, vinyl slipmat, booklet, 6 coasters, keychain, sticker

Originally released in 2005, OK Cowboy, Vitalic’s first album, is celebrating its twentieth anniversary with a reissue in several formats (box set, double vinyl, CD, digital), enriched with rare tracks and previously unreleased versions. OK Cowboy is a landmark album in electronic music, a pivotal record between eras. It perfectly captures that period while also anticipating the raw, abrasive new sounds of French Touch 2.0 (the movement led by Justice and the artists of the Ed Banger label). Twenty years later, the impact and power of this major album still mark it as a defining release of the mid-2000s, retaining its full sonic relevance today.

Limited release.

After “The Legend of Kaspar Hauser” directed by Davide Manulli, Vitalic is once again putting his music to moving images with “Disco Boy” by Giacomo Abbruzzese (awarded a Silver Bear at the 2023 Berlinale). Electronic, intense and navigating between a variety of different atmospheres, the soundtrack - much like the film it accompanies - is full of promise and mystery. “The Swamps”, “La Guerre” and “Helicopter” are reminiscent of the intense, dark and foreboding productions of Thomas Bangalter for “Irreversible” by director Gaspar Noé. In contrast, “Winter is Coming” and “Lost Time” are places of melancholy and sweetness where all bass has completely disappeared. As for the eponymous theme for the film, “Disco Boy”, it pays true electronic homage to the sound of disco. The retro-futurist soundtrack to “Disco Boy” oscillates between devastating kick drums, moist ambient and dreamlike swathes. Vitalic has created uncharted sonic landscapes that invite us on a voyage of initiation and self-discovery.

Poltergeist has that strange power of attraction that these personalities with their icy, mysterious aura hold. As soon as Ari Girard (aka Poltergeist) appears, something happens, he catches the light and strikes the spirits.

Kämpfer LP is a ghost story where Poltergeist invites Joy Division, New Order, Talking Heads, The Cure, Can, Kraftwerk, Nine Inch Nails or Jeff Mills for its first album. At the Poltergeist banquet, the crows of cold wave and the barbarians of krautrock, the metallers of indus rock and the freaks of techno meet.

The epicentre is Berlin, the Wall, Lou Reed's Gotham, the Bowie/Eno trilogy and the toxic nights of underground clubs...

Kämpfer LP, Poltergeist's first album, reveals its dark and disturbing universe. Marked by a heavy, deep and majestic atmosphere, this project evokes, without ever saying it openly, the climatic urgency, the ineluctable destiny, the human obsession to be first, to leave a trace of its passage and the nightmares which agitate the nocturnal spirits.

Between frenetic synths, bewitching waves and marked foot, this implacable album marks the beginning of the Poltergeist era.

Scratching synths, a dark and heavy universe: we can understand Vitalic's crush, who decided to sign the project at the first listening on his label Clivage Music.

With its saturated sounds, clipped beats and spacey pads, Walk Again opens a portal to a place full of mystery and promise.

Across 11 tracks, John Lord Fonda confirms that he is not only capable of writing techno bombs like We Can’t Breathe and Race For Nothing, but also breakbeat-tinged gems like Little Jazz.

The soaring melodies of Antarctica and Creme bring a dreamlike intensity to the project, while new-wave wannabee Together Again (featuring vocals by Gabriel Afathi of The George Kaplan Conspiracy) enlarges the musical horizon, planting its flag as an evolved piece of techno not afraid to mix genres.

Calmer moments such as Walk Again and A Descent Melody continue our journey into the richest of techno landscapes, where intriguing, fascinating tracks like They Will Fight For You.

Dazzling and cold, brutal and soft, the album marries a fluid, coherent mix of cerebral techno and poetic melodies, both calm and calming.

Walk Again, dance again, live again.

After the release of DISSIDÆNCE Episode 1, warmly met with both critical and popular success, Vitalic keeps his promise and returns with a second instalment, darker and more techno than the first, and this time with a marked industrial aesthetic - cold and minimal. The composition and production style have a post-cold wave heritage, something that has always been part of the artist's DNA but is now brandished with renewed pride.

DISSIDÆNCE Episode 2 opens with Sirens, a towering tornado of synths and sweat, followed by Dancing in the Street, The Void and Light is a Train, sparse techno boiled down to its essence - mechanical, cold and alarming. Tempering this hostility are moments of grace and poetry like Marching, Friends & Foes and Winter is Coming, both melodic and melancholic.

A two-pronged project masterfully orchestrated by Vitalic, a strange cosmic voyage of implacable energy.

Vitalic returns with a fifth album, which will be released in two volumes. "DISSIDÆNCE", the title of which is a whole story in itself – is an album that the producer describes as a return to the roots of his sonic identity, a kind of reinterpretation of the rock energy of his early albums.

The first volume of “DISSIDÆNCE” is a sort of concentrated resume of his strengths from the past twenty years, whether it's filthy, head-spinning tornado tracks or synth-laden love songs for a summer's day. With "DISSIDÆNCE" Episode 1, whose powerful beats and galloping sequencers translate the social and political anger of the global pandemic, Vitalic looks into his past and channels his love for off-kilter synth sounds, skew-whiff pads, heady refrains, distorted vocals and heavy beats dripping with sex and sweat, but above all his obsessional passion for dance music.

"DISSIDÆNCE" should be taken as a celebration of celebration, time-travel to an era that may not exist right now, but which will - and this album is the dazzling proof - be reborn from its ashes to burn bright once more, in all its raging glory.

180grs white vinyl, download card included.

John Lord Fonda announces a new album and returns to Citizen Records after a ten-year absence with a new EP, featuring two hard-hitting unreleased tracks.

A decade after his last album Supersonique, the Dijon-born artist is back with a vengeance, showcasing more than ever his dark side, and the least we can say is that it was worth the wait. Releasing once again on Citizen Records, the label founded by Vitalic, Fonda has dug deep into his psyche, channelling his experiences into strong, metallic, dreamlike rhythms.

Like a steel machine, the deep baseline of They Will Fight For You, with its slow, heavy, mechanical beat sets off at the pace of a long-distance run and keeps us locked into a deliciously brutal alternate reality. Early fans of the artist will go crazy for this dark, cerebral techno!

Les Dunes d’Altaïr offers a warmer, more mystical voyage thanks to its oriental tinges, and is a fitting homage to Plastikman's Spaz and Spastik monikers.

Despite being an ode to the power of rhythm, it's the image and delicate feel of a desert wind that wafts towards us, and the track keeps listeners breathless for nearly eight minutes, oscillating between these two worlds.

Guest of honour Damon Jee has remixed Les Dunes d’Altaïr, delivering a disco-flecked minimal rework perfect for accompanying the sun as it sets, or indeed rises.

The return of John Lord Fonda is definitely the comeback no-one should miss in 2021.

The Altaïr EP is the first taste of the artist's next album, due this autumn.